Integral Yoga Literature - By the Mother

Selections from the Collected Works of the Mother

from Volume 3, On the Dhammapada

(Conjugate Verses)

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Many are those who are not aware that one day we all must die. And those
who are aware of it appease their quarrels.

When you think you may die the next moment, immediately, automatically, there
occurs in you a detachment from all material things; it is logical that from then on
you think only of what does not depend upon this physical life and which is the
only thing that will still belong to you once you have left this body, that is to say,
the eternal existence. The Buddha did not use the word "Divine", but it is
essentially the same thing.

To think that one might die the next moment was formerly, in the ancient
initiations, a discipline that one had to follow for a certain time, for the reason I
have just mentioned and also in order to overcome all fear of death and to
accustom oneself to it. In that age and at the time when the Dhammapada was
spoken by the Buddha, the possibility of an earthly immortality was never
mentioned because this possibility belonged to such a far-off future that there
would have been no point in speaking of it.

Today Sri Aurobindo tells us that this possibility is near at hand and that we have
only to prepare for it. But the essential condition even to prepare for it is to
completely abolish all fear of death.